AMBIGUOUS LOSS

Grief does not only happen when we lose someone to death. For some of us, the loss of a loved one does not have an apparent markers.

The term "ambiguous loss" was first used in the 1970s by Pauline Boss, a researcher who studied families of soldiers who went missing.

Ambiguous loss is a loss that occurs without closure. This kind of loss leaves a person searching for answers, and thus complicates and delays the process of grieving. Ambiguous loss differs from ordinary loss in that there is no verification of death or no certainty that the person will come back or return to the way they used to be.

A physical ambiguous loss happens when a loved one is no longer physically around, such as a missing person.

Whereas psychological ambiguous loss occurs when a person is still physically there, but is psychologically absent.

Some examples of ambiguous loss are ageing parents, infertility (where you grieve a prospective future), loss of an unborn child, having a loved one who has dementia or critical illnesses, or having a loved one gone missing.

If due to a life event, one of your family members has a drastic change in their character or what they are like with you, you might experience unspoken frozen grief.

The person was ‘gone’, yet there was no explicit marker for the event.

When you were little, apart from your parents there might have been other significant others or adult that were significant in your life.

Perhaps it was a grandparent, an auntie or uncle or even a maid. They may no longer be in your life. They might have left your life in a sudden, abrupt or unexpected way.

Such rupture might also results in frozen grief.

It is essential that we unveil such grief, process and digest it, in order to move forward.

The darker the night, the brighter the stars, 
The deeper the grief, the closer is God.
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

This week’s experiment: Building an altar to a loved one/ vision

Use your imagination, create an altar to honour your relationship with a special person in your life. You may want to decorate it with pictures, words, letters or other relics of your time together.

Evoke your memory and create a physical manifestation of your love for this person.

You could do the same thing if you are grieving not a person, but an envisioned future that would no longer be fulfilled.

Draw inspirations from magazine images and objects.

You might want to allow your mind to immerse in a music track.

It will make you feel a little tender, but it helps to bring up buried emotional materials, allowing them to be digested and transformed.